India, April 7 -- Javokhir Sindarov sat in the players lounge yawning, stretching his limbs and occasionally looking up at the screen before him to check if his opponent had played a move yet. Back in the playing hall, Hikaru Nakamura, was a montage of emotions-frowning, shaking his head, furrowing his brows. At the end of 67 minutes and 44 seconds, the world No.2 pushed his h-pawn. It was an awful choice.

Nakamura went on to lose his Round 5 game and laid the blame squarely on his team of seconds. "This was 100 per cent on the people working for me," he said.

Seconds, a largely invisible workforce, are players who spend hours scouring through engines, studying openings, analysing, developing ideas, and handling the grunt work of prepar...